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PW: So I know that you had the children and eventually you moved to the East Bay because of your practice here. Did you have... well, tell me about moving your practice to the East Bay. I know you were starting to tell me earlier a story about Pittsburg.

HS: Really? Boy, I lost the... what happened was that I couldn't find work up here, radiology, gets hard by one, the first year, you're paid a salary, and the second year, you're offered a partnership if you made it that far. So I couldn't find anything here, so I worked in Los Angeles, so we went to several hospitals, three or four hospitals. Things were tidier in Los Angeles, it was easier to get along. So we'd go to one hospital, read the films out, go to the next hospital, read the films out, and so forth. But we weren't, at least I wasn't too happy in Los Angeles, although my sister was living there married to (John Yamashita). Anyway, it was nice to have somebody to go. So one of my co-residents was leaving Pittsburg because he wasn't being offered a partnership. He said, "This man will never offer a partnership," but I wanted to go leave early, so I went to work for this man in Pittsburg knowing that he's not going to give me a partnership. But I worked hard, and everybody liked me, and it was good. And most of the people there, there were only three other specialists, pediatrician was young, he was a good pediatrician. There was an older pediatrician who was really general practice, she was a nice person. And her husband as an ENT man, but they were not referred patients because everybody else was practicing general practice. And the pathologist was, had a specialized position. That was, the radiologist, pathologist and pediatrician, there were only three specialists, and I covered a lot and I never complained. The radiologist I worked for was not a very nice person, he would take Christmases and Thanksgiving off, he'd take most of the holidays off. But I didn't care, I liked to work. So the man that had the hospital contract, they were hospital, I forgot his name. I was nice to him, every time he'd go out of town, he would ask if I would cover him, that means I'd do all the work. And he liked me because I helped out and never complained. The Antioch hospital was so small, you went through the kitchen to go to one ward. But they were nice, they liked me. So when I said, when I was not offered a partnership, I bought a practice in San Francisco,  a new office in San Francisco. The people who ran it didn't think it was worth working in the office because it wasn't busy enough, so I bought it, not knowing any better. I paid sixty thousand dollars for it, I thought I bought everything. Actually, the equipment was leased, so I had to make payment. So I covered that by working in Franklin Hospital, a friend, what do you call, a resident, I'd go in at seven-thirty, start early, leave and go to the office at ten-thirty, go to lunch, quick lunch, and go to --

[Interruption]

PW: So you were still telling me about that medical practice in Pittsburg, California. The medical practice in Pittsburg, California, and that you purchased a business, a practice in San Francisco?

HS: Yeah. Well, anyway, I worked at four hospitals, Jean tolerated it. Maybe she didn't care whether I was around. Anyway, she took care of the kids, so she was very good. And it wasn't long before we were renting... oh, incidentally, we were renting a home in Concord. Concord was maybe forty thousand, fifty thousand people, and they didn't want to rent homes to Japanese or any Asians. Yoshiye Togasaki, who was a doctor, family of three women doctors, all Johns Hopkins, she couldn't rent a home or buy a home, but there was a guy named Coffee, he was the only realtor that permitted, would become a realtor. So we were able to rent a home in a new development in Concord. The guy next door, young man, they're all young ones there, new developments. He was very nice to us, and he owned it, he rented it to us. A deer hunter would give us deer meat, never ate deer meet before. Anyway, then we made friends with the neighbor next door, they were named Savacool, Joan Savacool, and his husband, he worked for AT&T, and she, we became good friends. She revealed to me that she was one of those who picketed and didn't want us to move in just to rent the place. So she was living in this small development, actually, she moved right there afterwards. After we had moved... no, we eventually moved, after we were doing better, we bought a home in what's called the Eichler tract. Eichler, Joseph Eichler, was the first developer to sell homes to anybody. So it was known as a very liberal area, they said the Eichler tract owner shops at the co-op, we used to have a co-op here, has a Volkswagen and goes to the Unity, it's called something else, Unity Civic Church or something, Unitarian church. So that was the joke. But it was a nice area, all the homes were nice and new.

PW: Concord, is this Concord still?

HS: No, this is in Walnut Creek.

PW: And what year are we talking about?

HS: 1960. But they opened some homes, but unfortunately, Eichler homes were not really built for, Walnut Creek (which) was warm, because there are no trees there, and there were no air conditioning in these homes, it was all glass, had floor, what do they call floors, what do you they call those floors?

Off camera: Radiant heating.

HS: What?

Off camera: Radiant heating.

HS: It's something heating. Anyway, it runs hot water underneath the floor. The floor is hard because it's concrete, but it's very comfortable. So anyway, the only thing was they had flat roofs, and that was about the only thing, but it had lots of glass and lots of room, the kitchen was the living room, so it was way ahead of its time. But they had lots of homes in Marin County and Peninsula. So Eichler really started the, made it possible for blacks and Asians to buy, so there were a lot of Asians in these homes, and two black couples, both doctors working. Now, where was I? We're back to the Concord home. Joanne Savacool moved here, she told us that she was the one that picketed, there were others who picketed. And the other good neighbor was Madeline, what's Madeline's last name? Nunn, they moved in the same time we did. This woman named... there was a neurologist there, English neurologist, who came over and taught at New York, NYU, and he was a writer, his name was Oliver Sacks. Was it Oliver? Anyway, Sacks was the last name, he's a poet, sold, every book he wrote, and he wrote many books, was a big winner. He had Prosopagnosia, he cannot remember faces or names, me. So everybody thought he was a stuck-up, but he revealed that he could not remember, so he asked for apologies. But there's an opposite disease, there are people who cannot forget names. And the Nunns who moved in was this woman, she came from Vallejo, moved in with us to Eichler's, very friendly woman, and the husband was a Cal grad, and they were good to us. And they moved, they didn't know it, they built this new home right here. So we had a common gate to their home there, common gate. So we really had a nice... and then several other Pittsburg doctors, and Pittsburg eventually built up to have more specialists and were living because we were, bring the doctors here, two doctors over there. So what's the... old farmers, one of the generations was living right there, the lady was one of the Philadelphia hundreds, nice woman. And we used to have parties, we don't anymore, because the kids are all grown up.

PW: So you would invite all of your friends and neighbors to come to your house here?

HS: They used to, huh? And one, I knew he was conservative, and he wanted to run for an office in Walnut Creek, council or whatever. So I became his campaign manager, me a libertarian, not a libertarian, a liberal. I put up signs, I gave him money, and we had a party. He lost by a wide margin.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.